Hi All,

I want to thank you all for the effort and work you did for this class, I appreciate everyone’s engagement with the readings and each other in the DBs. I know this wasn’t the semester any of us wanted, and I am truly impressed with everyone who is juggling school, work, family, and more right now.

This was my first time teaching online, and like many of you, I wished we could be in the classroom together, talking about the content that is clearly so relevant to our current moment.

In your course reflections, many of you said that the topic of misinformation & disinformation was one that you found interesting and eye-opening. For further reading on misinformation as it is perpetrated through data, tables, numbers, etc, I recommend the book Calling Bullsht by Bergstrom and West. For something less time-intesive, this recent podcast on the confluence of the business side of local news and disinformation is very interesting. I also recommend the entirety of the podcast Citations Needed, which is “a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit.”

Another theme that came up in the reflections was that of skepticism or questioning. Victoria said “I tend to ask myself ‘Is there any proof to follow this statement?’ ‘Is this an opinion based statement?’ and ‘Is this a fact ?’” And Yuxiang noted “although it is quite hard to always be skeptical, at least I will not blindly trust the information I see anymore.” I agree that always being skeptical is hard, and not necessarily ideal. However, I do hope that to the best of your ability, you’ll keep that little questioning voice in the back of your head as much as possible.

Literature Review Final Draft

The final draft of the Literature Review is all that remains for this course. I’ve posted a DB with the details here. As always, you can email me with questions.

CCNY Flexible Grading Policy

You should have received an email to your CCNY address with the details of the Flexible Grading Policy. Below are excerpts, and I encourage you to find and read the entire email. 

In recognition of the extraordinary circumstances students continue to face during the COVID-19 pandemic, The City College Faculty Senate on December 10th approved the adoption of a modified version of the Credit/No Credit (CR/NC) policy instituted last Spring.  Please consult with an advisor, faculty member, and financial aid advisor as necessary to help guide you toward a decision that is best suited for you in your major course of study.

For most courses, students may opt to have the final grade changed to CR or NC (credit or no-credit) in the Fall 2020 semester. Some courses will be excluded from this policy (typically courses that require a minimum grade for advancement in a major. The list will be announced soon). The deadline for declaring CR/NC is under review by CUNY and will be announced very soon. For non-excluded classes, this choice will be available to the student in CUNYfirst after final grades are assigned.

Courses taken by first- and second-semester freshmen in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences are also covered by an automatic NC policy, by which F grades are automatically converted to NC. Here is the list of classes permitted for the College of Liberal Arts and Science first- and second-semester freshman grading policy.

We’ve reached the (almost!) end of the semester. There is only one last DB and the final paper left.

This week there are no readings. The final DB is an exercise in metacognition (thinking about your own thinking), which is an important part of the learning process. Reflecting on what you learned helps exercise essential skills such as critical and creative thinking, useful failure, adaptability, and more.

If you have time this week to work on revising your Lit Review, I encourage you to do so. The due date for the final version is Sunday 12/20. Full details on the structure, length, and what is expected are here. As always, if you have questions about the final paper, or any of your work in the class, email me at [email protected]

As with all your other classes, the College asks that you complete course surveys. These are anonymous, and the results do not go to me–or any professor–but to the College’s Teaching & Learning Center. The survey is open until Dec 13, you can fill it out here.

You will need the following information for the question numbers listed

1. Course Code: 62600
2. Instructor Name: Sarah Cohn
3. Course Subject, Number, and Section: LIB 10000 – C
4. Course Component: Lecture
5. This class met: Asynchronously
6. Attendance: N/A

This week is our final set of readings, and our final reading response DB.

Archives and libraries are often tied closely together as institutions that hold, and control access to, information. Archives come in many formats and have many uses as sites of research and learning.

In Archives: Principles and Practice (2017, pg 4), Millar offers the following definition, which helps to frame the rest of the readings.

The word ‘archives’ can be used to refer to the materials themselves, to the institution caring for them or to the repository holding those materials. A full definition of ‘archives’, encompassing the three primary ways in which the word may be used, is this: 

1. Documentary materials created, received, used and kept by a person, family, organization, government or other public or private entity in the conduct of their daily work and life and preserved because they contain enduring value as evidence of and information about activities and events. 

2. The agency or institution responsible for acquiring and preserving archival materials and making those items available for use. 

3. The building or other repository housing archival collections. 

As always, the readings are linked in the Course Schedule, and the DB prompt is on the forum.

Literature Review

I will provide feedback on your literature review rough drafts and return them to you this week. Please take my comments into account when revising the paper for your final draft, which will be due December 19th.

If you have questions about the literature review, or anything class related, you can email me or make an appointment to talk.

Hi All, 

There are just a few weeks left in the semester, so it is time to get going on the final assignment, the literature review.

That means that this week, the literature review rough draft is due. Details on what is expected are available here. Please note that you will email this assignment directly to me, do not post it in the forum.

DB Roundup

Last week explored the topics of public libraries and systems of classification. In keeping with just about everything we’ve touched on this semester, the underlying themes of bias and access are still at play here. Access to information has been controlled in a variety of ways throughout this country’s history, and public libraries are no exception to this. The impact of segregated education and libraries is will with us today.

As with the algorithms that undergird our search engines, classification systems were created by people (who had biases, as do we all) and those people’s biases got encoded in the systems, to the point where they’re so normalized, it is hard to read them as biases. As a species, we love the idea of ordering knowledge, but it is a near impossible task, as it presumes a universal truth and a singular way of understanding the world. 

Weekly Readings & Assignment

This week our readings are on public libraries as cultural institutions, and the classification systems they use, and how both of these impact our access to information.

For each of the posted readings on the course schedule, please pay attention to the assigned sections to read.

Literature Review Sources

As you move forward with finding the remaining sources for your literature review, I encourage you to re-read the assigned class readings on evaluating sources, from 9/21 on the course schedule along with the Library’s Research Tooklit segment on evaluating sources, in particular the segment on determining quality.

If you have questions about any of your sources, you can email me, or post them in the general questions DB.

Course Admin

If you have missing discussion boards or reading quizzes that you’d like to make up, please send me an email with a proposed time frame for completion of your missing work.

Hi All,

This week your main focus should be on getting started on research for your literature review. The purpose of the literature review is to inform readers of the significant knowledge and ideas that have been established on a topic, and to compare, contrast and/or connect findings that were identified when reviewing researchers’ work.

Because of the nature of the paper, research is an important part of the process, and not something to be done in haste at the last minute.

In the research process, it is very normal to find and skim many articles, and then make your final selection. Generally speaking, for each article you decide to use in your paper, it is expected that you’ll have found and skimmed AT LEAST 2-3 that you decided not to use. So if you need 8 total in the end, expect to review 16-24.

This week, I’m asking you to find and summarize at least 3 articles on your topic, and post the citations and summaries in the DB. You will need 8 for your final paper. If you find all 8 this week, great! You’ll have to do this work eventually, and if you can do it now you’re saving future you.

I strongly suggest using this week to find and read the scholarly journal articles, since that can be the hardest and most time consuming part of research. You should be using library databases to find scholarly journal articles. See the course schedule for the related readings.

Your source citations can be in the style of your choosing–APA, Chicago, or MLA. As long as you are consistent throughout, whichever you’re comfortable with is fine.

The source summaries should be short, very short. 3-4 sentences max. This is an exercise in identifying the relevant parts of the article, and concisely summing those up.

As always, if you have questions about the assignment or the research process, you can post them in the general questions DB, or email me at [email protected].

DB Roundup

The related topics of academic journal publishing and scholarly citational practice seemed fairly new to most people, and I hope you gained some insight into both. In particular, the articles on citational practice relate to several themes of this course–whose perspectives and voices are included, whose are excluded, and what harms are done by the exclusion.

The point that Ray (along with Mott & Cockayne) makes is not to artificially inflate citations for scholars of color, but rather to acknowledge and work to counter the long history of racial exclusion in the academy, and the effects that racial exclusion has. At the end of the article, Ray offers some preemptive responses to critics, one of them being the “history of racial exclusion in academe makes it difficult to claim that citation patterns are neutral measures. ” Academia likes to believe itself a meritocracy, where the best ideas rise to the top and get cited more, but this ignores systemic racism that is elided by using the concept of meritocracy. 

Mott & Cockayne are more direct in their assessment of the issue. They say “citation is equally a technology for reproducing sameness and excluding difference” and “careful and conscientious citation is important because the choices we make about whom to cite – and who is then left out of the conversation – directly impact the cultivation of a rich and diverse discipline, and the reproduction of knowledge” and “conceptualizing citation as a performative act means paying attention to why and how authority congeals around certain bodies and voices, and thinking through how this authority might be dismantled” and “well-cited scholars have authority precisely because they are well-cited”. 

This last argument is a version of ‘we do it this way because we always have’ and is directly related to Cathy O’Neil’s talk about algorithms, and how they can model forecasts from existing data. If the input data only looks one way, the forecast will as well. 

As all of these authors indicate, this is a known problem in multiple academic disciplines, which suggests the problem lies in the structure and practices of the academy, and not with individual scholars. Mott & Cockayne offer alternative ways of approaching citational practice, and there are others whose goal is to amplify marginalized voices, like the Cite Black Women project.

Weekly Readings & Assignment

This week the readings are pretty light, a combination of short videos and short readings. As always, find the readings on the course schedule. The assignment is the third and final reading quiz, available here.

Course Admin

While I talked to almost everyone about their lit reivew topic and what to expect for the assignment, you can find details on paper structure, a timeline, and some sample papers here.

Course Admin

Don’t forget to schedule your mid-semester check-in. Per the grading scheme, this check in is one of the requirements that needs to be met for A, B, and C grades. These meetings will be short, and we’ll use the time to talk about your literature review topic, as well as your progress in the course in general. Use this link to see availability and schedule a time. Choose a time between 10/15 and 10/29. Once you make an appointment, I’ll email you a Zoom link.

DB Roundup

While the discussion boards cannot truly replace the in-class discussion, this week’s board has come the closest so far. I was heartened to read posts and replies by folks really engaging with the readings, and with each other! It is OK (necessary, even) to disagree, and to voice that disagreement. 

Mohammad notes that in terms of social justice issue, social media can help bring “more awareness of the situation and bringing it up to the surface” and Daniel brings this up as well, citing some specifics of the ways social media can amplify a message with “the ability to convey the B.L.M message from different events, NBA took part, NFL, and other famous people sacrificed something in order to support the B.L.M to emphasis the message and seeking for society change.” 

Noguosadia offers a critique of social media activism, and the ways the constraints of the platforms impact the message. He says “the worst thing online activism can do is over simplify complex issues (policing, taxation, foreign policy etc…) and then give an overly simple solution,” and how online movements “can often skip dialogues and conversations rather than spark them.”

Several folks brought up other social media movements beyond BLM, with Jhanzaib making connections between the USA and international movements. “The [Me Too] movement was so strong in the US that other countries had their version of the movement. In Japan, their version of the movement is called “With You,” and one reason it may not have been noticed in the US is because their main social media platform is called Line; something rarely used in the US.”

Weekly Readings & Assignment

This week’s readings take us away from social media and into the academy. The goal of this week is to introduce the economic model of academic (scholarly) publishing, why journals are behind paywalls–library or otherwise–and the importance of citation in building a discipline’s cannon, and how something as innocuous seeming as citation can have a huge impact on scholar’s careers. As always, find the readings on the course schedule, and the DB prompt on the forum.

DB Roundup

I really enjoyed seeing everyone’s data visualizations this week! Creating effective visualizations is a skill and an art, and most of us don’t do it frequently in our day to day, so for many this was one of their first attempts at it. There are sites dedicated to both bad and good examples if you’re interested in exploring the world of data viz a bit more.

As a reader/viewer of data visualizations, it is important to remember that someone made both data and design choices in order to tell a specific story. Data isn’t neutral, and data visualizations aren’t neutral. Data visualizations are a regular part of our current information environment, and learning to read and interpret them with a critical eye is an important skill set.

Weekly Readings & Assignment

This week’s readings take us back to social media, specifically social media activism. As always, find the reading in the course schedule, and the DB post guidelines in the forum. This is a straightforward reading response post.

Course Admin

Don’t forget to schedule your mid-semester check-in. These meetings will be short, and we’ll use the time to talk about your literature review topic, as well as your progress in the course in general. Use this link to see & schedule available dates and times. Choose a time between 10/15 and 10/29. Once you make an appointment, I’ll email you a Zoom link.

DB Roundup
This week you posted your topics for your literature review. Many of you will need to do a bit of research and reading in order to refine your topic & question, or to adequately tie your proposed topic to the themes of the course. I will provide feedback and suggestions individually on how to refine your topic for those who need it. If you have questions about your individual topic, please email me. If you have questions about the assignment in general, post them in general questions.

You can also drop in anytime to either office hours (10-11am) or the class meeting (11am-12:15pm) tomorrow, Wednesday 10/14. Zoom info for both was sent via email.

The literature review assignment is divided into four parts. The next step will be due as DB 10, on November 12. You can see the assignment timeline with all four due dates here.

Weekly Readings & Assignment
This week’s reading is an introduction to visual literacy. Data visualizations are a regular part of our current information environment, and learning to read and interpret them with a critical eye is an important skill set. As with everything, data isn’t neutral, and neither are data visualizations. Two different people with the same starting data set can make different decisions on what parts of that data to include, exclude, and highlight in their visualizations that will tell different stories, or lead viewers to draw differing conclusions. As always, find the reading in the course schedule.

Your assignment this week is to create a data visualization of your own. The details are up in the DB post. In addition to your visualization, you’ll write a short reflection, in which you’ll tell us what data you choose, why you decided to use the visualisation you did, any design and data inclusion/exclusion choices you made, how you feel about how it came out, and any other thoughts on the process.

Course Admin
Over the next two weeks, I’ll be scheduling your mid-semester check-in meetings. These will be short, and we’ll use the time to talk about your literature review topic, as well as your progress in the course in general. Use this link, and under the photo there is a Schedule Appointment button. Choose a time between 10/15 and 10/29. Once you make an appointment, I’ll email you a Zoom link.